windows 7 - Computer will not recognize new hard drive formatted to FAT32

07
2014-07
  • Troubled

    I have recently acquired a new seagate hard drive. I formatted it the other day to FAT32, as I had my previous hard drive (the exact same model), and plugged it in to my TV. It worked fine. However today I attempted to plug it in to my computer again, to add some files and the computer now refuses to recognize it. It is not anywhere on my computer, not in disk management, and it is as if nothing is plugged in. No light on the hard drive either, although it spins up when initially plugged in. What can I do to fix this?

    • Answers
    Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

    Related Question

    boot - Computer not recognizing hard drive
  • Elliott

    Hey, a few days ago my computer wouldn't boot..said something along the lines of "Please insert correct boot media and press any key" Its oldish so I tried what I could and just went out to buy new hard drive.

    Yesterday, installed it and it worked fine. Put Windows XP onto it and installed SP3 etc, turned on today and the same thing has happened! Tried changing cables, remove graphics card etc, restoring BIOS to default but nothing works.

    Motherboard: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
    Ram: 2GB
    HDD: 320gb Hitachi

    Any ideas?

    Thanks :)


    • Related Answers
  • Steve

    Check your motherboard for bad caps. If you have good power and good cabling then the drive is bad.

    Google Images http://images.google.com/images?q=bad%20caps

  • marcusw

    This is what happens when you put windows on a different model of hard drive from the one it was originally installed on. Booting to your installation disk and telling it to repair the installation will get you back up and running in a jiffy, best of luck to you!

  • Dave M

    Is the hard drive detected in BIOS? Is it free of malware? Can you connect it to a different system as a secondary drive (or put in an external enclosure) to test the drive and scan for malware?

  • rob

    It sounds like your hard drive may be defective. Try running chkdsk or badblocks, as noted here: http://superuser.com/questions/66820/full-physical-hd-check/66930#66930

    If chkdsk or badblocks doesn't report any bad blocks, it's still possible that the drive is failing and the bad block scan triggered sector reallocations. You can install SmartMonTools + GSmartControl to view the SMART attributes. Once both tools are installed, run GSmartControl, double-click on your hard drive, then click on the Attributes tab. In particular, check the value for Reallocated Sector Count--on a brand-new drive, the raw value should be 0.